Film Review: Finding Nemo 3D

Finding Nemo is a great film and you should rush out to see it this weekend whether you like 3D or not.

Nemo is a Pixar classic and it remains one of the most gorgeous animated films every put up on screen. WALL·E might be the only film to top it in Pixar’s collection and seeing Finding Nemo up on the big screen again is just a treat. The undersea environment is full of beautiful plant life, a diverse range of creatures and would act as an excellent screen saver.

The film’s beauty isn’t the only reason Finding Nemo is heralded as a classic, it’s the huge cast of lovable characters and heartwarming coming of age story (for both father and son) that has gotten this film so many fans over the year. Both Marlin and Nemo grow up a lot over the course of the film and those arcs are wonderfully realized and told with a lot of emotion. Dory is also played wonderfully by Ellen DeGeneres as she delivers one of the all-time great voice over performances. The memory loss gags never get stale, every time she messes up Nemo’s name it kills and her earnest nature mixed with her condition makes her easy to be loved. The cast beyond DeGeneres is top-notch as well, Albert Brooks, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett, Allison Janney, Geoffrey Rush, and director Andrew Stanton himself all create wonderful characters for us to enjoy and Nemo stands as one of Pixar’s best ensembles ever put together.

Revisiting the film in its entirety for the first time in a while did have me noticing a couple chinks in the armor. First, the movie just delivers gut punch after gut punch in arguably an overly manipulative fashion. Every time the film picks you up, it pushes you back down and I couldn’t believe how dark and sad this film gets at times. I mean, I always skipped the opening when I watched the film on DVD, but man, kids are being built emotionally stronger after watching this film. The film’s intercutting plots are also a tad distracting, but Stanton and company handle the back and forth nature of the narrative about just as well as you could with the two almost completely independent storylines.

Finding Nemo continues to be great and is one of the funnier animated films ever released. DeGeneres and Brooks are excellent, the film flies along and the animation still might not have been topped in technical beauty. The 3D conversion looks great and does really add some depth to the underwater adventure, but regardless of that you should support this classic in theaters so Disney keeps re-releasing all of their classics for years to come.